


koukla; or, the doll

by persimonne



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adoption, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Enemies to Adoptive Parents, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, First Time, Kidnapping, Kylo Ren Redemption, Murder, No Pregnancy, Non-Penetrative Hate Sex, Parent Kylo Ren, Past Child Abuse, Safe to Read if You're Triggered by Pregnancy, Sex, Stabbing, Virgin Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:01:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22992865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persimonne/pseuds/persimonne
Summary: A journey to a desert planet comes with unexpected consequences for the Supreme Leader of the First Order.While on the hunt for a Sith holocron that he believes will finally convince Rey to join him, he finds something, or better, someone else: Yu, an orphan Togruta cub.Caught between his own painful memories and visions of Rey’s childhood, Kylo Ren is determined to give the child what none of them ever had before, learning how to be human again in the process–how to be Ben Solo again.But what will Rey think of his supposed change of heart?
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 228
Kudos: 475
Collections: Reylo Charity Anthology: Volume 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally written for the Reylo Charity Anthology (@reylocharity on Twitter, reylocharityanthology.tumblr.com on Tumblr). Check out their projects, they're awesome!
> 
> I will never thank flypaper_brain enough for having betaed this whole fic with an attention and a dedication that often left me speechless. If you find this story readable, it's thanks to her, and the time she gifted me. Thank you <3

  


The Supreme Leader doesn’t mind sand. Deserts are usually silent, calm, and meditative places, qualities that he’d come to appreciate during his experience as a Jedi padawan, living under his uncle’s fickle thumb. His heavy boots crunch, step after step, on the regolith-covered surface of the planet Abafar, a forgotten world in the Outer Rim, abandoned after the only mining facility of its system closed decades ago. 

His destination is a small, dilapidated market located in an artificial depression on the surface of the planet; a wound in the barren earth where strange and unusual objects have a habit of turning up. Kylo Ren keeps walking, his face hidden behind his old mask, a new hooded cape covering his whole body from prying eyes. The total absence of shadows on the ground almost unsettles him; the regolith reflects the dull, orange light of the sky and the dark shapes of his feet as they slowly carry him towards what he came to Abafar for: a Sith holocron.

He’s doing it for _her._ He abandoned the Supremacy for a few days, uncaring of the sycophants on board–sycophants led by Armitage Hux–who are surely already plotting a coup to overthrow him at the earliest opportunity. Someone told someone that told someone else that someone on this planet, someone at the local market, between its stands made of sticks and rags, had a Sith holocron. He needs the object to show Rey what happened with her parents, to finally make her accept the truth she still refuses to acknowledge. Maybe, with help from the visions provided by the cursed object, she’ll finally believe him.

Kylo Ren doesn’t know the name of the person he’s looking for, and to be fair, he doesn’t even know if they’re human or not: a simple stroll through the miserable exhibition of stolen goods is more than enough to be able to peek into any mind he comes across, discovering who’s hiding the holocron amongst their junk. And he can roam their simple minds undetected; here, on this forsaken planet, no one has ever seen a Force-sensitive being, let alone faced mind-probing abilities as honed as his own.

Kylo eventually finds him in a secluded corner: a scanty looking Em'liy man, scarves and rags covering his face, protecting his eyes from the eerie orange light. There is a dirty sheet at his feet, sheltering the meager merchandise from the dusty regolith, and Kylo immediately notices the holocron. Unactivated, it’s just a dark grey, anonymous pyramid that could easily be mistaken for a useless knick-knack; just a forgotten bauble on a shelf.

“What would that be?” Kylo asks, modulated voice croaking from behind his recently repaired helmet, his index finger pointing at the cursed object.

The vendor shrugs. “That’s some kind of game, but I never managed to solve the puzzle and open it. I can make you a good price for that, just for you, Sir.”

Kylo nods, and the Em'liy man asks for a modest price: no need to meddle with his mind, then. But while Kylo reaches into his pocket to retrieve the credits stashed there, a quick, small hand sneaks out from under his cloak, clever little fingers snatching a couple of chips from his gloved hand before he can do anything. The hand belongs to a child, who runs away faster than light, leaving both Kylo and the merchant aghast. He hadn’t noticed them in the slightest: they were nimble, silent and confident in their theft, probably not even knowing that their victim was, in fact, the Supreme Leader of the First Order.

“I’m so, so sorry Sir,” the Em’liy promptly says. “That was Ladro Furis’ new kid, please, forgive her. She’s a good child, but he’ll beat her if she returns home empty-handed.”

Kylo is only half listening to what the man is saying, his mind already running to Rey, and her childhood on Jakku. She never had to resort to this kind of theft, as far as he knows, but he saw how Unkar Plutt liked to starve her whenever she failed to bring him junk good enough to sell or trade. He clenches his jaw, teeth gnashing behind the newly repaired faceplate of his helmet.

“Sir, I can give you the puzzle for half the price. It’s only a stupid game, after all.”

“Don’t worry,” Kylo answers. “Keep it for me, I’ll be back shortly.”

“Sir! Sir! Don’t hurt the child, I beg of you!”

Kylo doesn’t listen to the vendor, and begins to walk in the direction where the child disappeared. He can’t see any footprints in the whitish regolith, but the settlement is so small that there aren’t many places to hide. There is no one around, the dilapidated buildings only a faint echo of the past, dry walls now crumbling under the unforgiving winds that roll over the barren planet. Closing his eyes, he can sense where the child went, and he follows her invisible steps; he soon finds her, trembling in an alley behind a dump.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispers, crouching. “You can keep the credits.”

Kylo can see her bare feet peeking out from under a huge, empty dustbin. They’re small and dirty, her skintone matching the orange sky. A near-human, then. There are scabs around her ankles, like someone tied her up with shackles, and he is immediately filled with a blind rage. He has to suppress the instinct to raze this wretched place to the ground; he counts slowly to ten, and breathes deeply through his nose, the filters of the mask producing an eerie sound. 

The child gulps, and he takes a few seconds to compose himself before moving the dustbin, its rusty wheels creaking on the regolith, exposing the child to his gaze. She’s a Togruta, the blueish montrals on her head barely concealed by her shaggy hood. Her eyes are huge and liquid, but even though she’s trembling he doesn’t detect fear in them, only stubborn determination. This kid reminds him of Rey even more than before.

Kylo pulls his hood down and unlatches his mask, its fasteners hissing in the silence of the abandoned alley. The child doesn’t move from her crouched position, big blue eyes glued on him while he removes the mask, revealing his face to her for the first time.

“What’s your name?” he asks her, his deep voice finally unfiltered.

The child doesn’t answer, but her trembling finally stops, and Kylo lets out a sigh of relief. She’s looking at him with curiosity now, like she can’t believe that under that scary mask there is only a boring human man with a broken nose and shaggy black hair. He reaches out, extending his arm towards the girl. She doesn’t flinch, but she doesn’t move from her spot either.

“Do you have a name?” Kylo asks again. “I have one. It’s–”

The Supreme Leader suddenly finds himself at a loss for words; in his head he sees flashes of an old man–his father–crying his name on that wretched footbridge; and flashes of a young woman–his equal in the Force–throwing Vader’s lightsaber in his direction, saving his life. 

“My name is Ben,” he whispers to the child, almost surprised, like this Togruta cub just made him realize something important, something vital. “What’s yours?”

“Y–you,” she answers, her voice so feeble that he almost misses it.

“Your name is _You_?” he repeats, and she nods eagerly, as if she’s proud of it.

This child doesn’t have a name. They simply call her _you_ , like she can’t even be considered a person, and she believes it’s her own name. Once again, Kylo is almost blinded by rage, but stops himself before he can scare her like he did before.

“You,” he whispers, breathing deeply. “Do you have a home?”

The child seems to think about it, then she nods, looking unconvinced.

“Is someone called Ladro Furis living with you?”

She lowers her gaze, nodding almost imperceptibly.

“Can you bring me to him? I will give you this,” he says, showing her a credit chip, its shiny surface reflecting the orange of the sky.

The child gets up, finally accepting his hand, the credit soon stashed in a hidden pocket of her vest with the other chips she stole earlier. Her fingers are cold, even through Kylo’s leather gloves, and her hands are so small that he’s afraid he will crush her with his huge paws. When she starts walking, leading the way, he tries not to look at the bloody scabs around her wrist, but fails. Ladro Furis will soon be a dead man.

***

The little girl brings Kylo to the outskirts of another small settlement through a huge corridor drilled in the earth. If the place where they were before could be considered dilapidated, this one could be only described as literally crumbling to the ground. Ladro’s house is one of the few that are only partially collapsed, its rusty metal door protected by dirty rags sewn together in a careless way. She stops in front of it, patting Kylo’s hand.

“Stay here, Ben.” She finally talks, and hearing his old name pronounced by a Togruta as tall as his own boots is almost uncanny. 

“Why?” 

“I tell him first. Or he be angry.”

She enters the door, closing it behind her, and Kylo can’t help but worry, a sinking feeling that stems from his stomach and radiates through his limbs. He tries to listen to what is happening inside the dilapidated house, but his Bond with Rey decides to open right at that moment, announcing its arrival with that eerie, vacuum sound that Kylo found himself missing more than air after she cut him off on Crait. Unfortunately, this is not the best moment to interact with Rey and he curses the Force for its timing.

“There you are,” she spits, venom filling her voice. “ _Our Supreme Leader._ ”

She’s standing, sweaty, in front of him. She’s strong, and beautiful, and everything he could desire from his equal in the Force; he wants to respond, but he can’t indulge in a battle of words right now.

“Rey,” he whispers. “This is a very bad time.”

“Why? It’s not like I _chose_ to connect with you like this. Are you too busy with your evil deeds to talk to me? Disappointed you failed to make a colander out of the Falcon?”

He’s about to bite back, but a loud thud from inside the house catches his attention. The child is crying, and the man is shouting at her. Rey is still talking as well, but he isn’t listening to her anymore, he’s trying to understand what Ladro Furis is saying. He catches a couple of morsels such as “gone the whole morning”, “only three credits” and “pay for this” before Rey starts yelling, too.

“Ben! Are you even listening to what I’m saying?” 

Kylo breaks the door down with a kick, and ignites his lightsaber. In front of him is a scene he will forever struggle to forget: the Togruta child crawling on the ground, her face coated with tears, picking up the few credits she brought to Ladro. Her hood has been ripped, so he can finally see the colour of her montrals: a dull blue, interrupted by thin white stripes. The man is standing behind her. He's old and quite short, and his sparse white hair doesn't compliment his pasty complexion at all; he has the look of a slimy, underground animal. 

Rey is still talking to him, but his ears are ringing, blood pressure keeping her voice at bay. A simple swing of the red blade, and the man’s head flies against a dirty wall. The child is still on the ground, bawling her eyes out, and Kylo, after extinguishing his saber, picks her up. She doesn’t even have the strength to offer resistance, and immediately hides her face in the crook of his neck. She’s warm and sticky, and Kylo covers her small head with a flap of his cape. He doesn’t know what to do next, but he knows that this little kid with no name needs him, and he’ll be there for her. 

Rey is standing silently in the middle of the room, her chest heaving and her amber eyes filled with pain; Ladro’s beheaded corpse at her feet. Kylo looks at her for the last time and exits the hovel, cradling the girl against him until she stops crying, whispering to her that no one will hurt her from now on. Once he reaches the market, he leaves a whole bag of credits to the Em’liy vendor in exchange for the holocron, and he quickly boards his TIE fighter. The child is fast asleep on his lap as he returns to the Supremacy. 

***

Kylo quickly gets used to the child’s presence in his arms. She weighs next to nothing and despite her still-open wounds, she stays asleep for the entire trip, her little hand squeezing the fabric of his tunic. He knows that there is a quarantine protocol to respect when bringing guests onboard the Supremacy, but he can’t wait to put her in a real bed, and he almost bypasses the checkpoint by nearly incinerating the poor attendants with his murderous gaze. They cower, but if they’re surprised he’s bringing a child on board, they don’t show it.

“Supreme Leader, we need at least a name to register them,” one of the officers pleads. “You can take them to your quarters, and we can arrange for the medical droid to come to you instead of bringing them back to the infirmary. We wouldn’t want to stress the child, Sir.”

Kylo bites his lower lip. The girl’s name is an issue since she doesn’t actually have one, and what she believes to be her name is a lie.

“Her name–her name is Yu,” he finally blurts out. 

Changing someone’s name is not something to be taken lightly, and he doesn’t want to impose his choices on the child, like Snoke did with him–how every darkside master before him did with their apprentice. This child surely doesn’t know how to read, let alone write, and she won’t notice a single letter missing from her already short “name”.

The officers look at him. “Could you please spell that, Supreme Leader?”

“Yirt-Usk. It’s simple,” he answers. 

“Any surnames?”

Kylo shakes his head. “Just Yu.”

***

Yu remains calm until Kylo deposits her on his bed, unconcerned about the dirty rags she’s still wearing. A bath and fresh clothing can wait until tomorrow, sleep and safety are what she needs most right now. Her eyes open as soon as he finishes tucking her in. They’re the same colour as her montrals, and her face is striped with white as well. He doesn’t know if her patterns will eventually change when–if–she grows up. The thought that she could die fills him with dread.

“Ben?” she’s asking, her voice feeble.

“Sleep. You’re safe now.”

“Don’t leave. Please.”

Kylo sighs. He hadn’t foreseen this, and flashes of the Falcon disappearing into the sky soon make his heart skip a beat. He removes his gloves, his belt and his boots, and joins the child on the bed. She extends a hand towards him, and he takes it, dwarfing it with his huge paw. The fact that she isn’t scared of him in the slightest warms his heart in an unexpected way. Maybe–maybe it’s not too late for him.

He notices her wrist is bleeding again, the thin skin breaking after the slightest movement on her part. Tomorrow morning he will order the medidroid to bring bacta patches. He also makes a mental note to cancel all his appointments for the following days.

After Yu finally falls asleep again, Kylo withdraws his hand from hers and touches her head. Her montrals are warm and firm, and she’s dreaming of orange skies and white horizons. There is no one else inside her head, just her.

***

The following morning, Kylo activates the bathtub in his personal bathroom for the first time in years and prepares a bath for Yu. She jumps in the warm water after disrobing herself and carefully folding her dirty rags, depositing them on a stool beside the tub. Kylo hopes she’s not too attached to them since they appear to be beyond repair; he has already ordered the sewing droids to prepare something especially for her.

Yu surprises Kylo by washing herself with little to no help. She doesn’t stall in the tub the way he remembers doing as a child, but she cleans herself in a quick and efficient way, like she has something very important to do. He helps her out of it, wetting his sleeves, and he’s helping her dry herself without opening her wounds again when there is a knock at the door. He leaves her on a stool, her small body engulfed by the Supreme Leader’s own bathrobe, and he approaches the door.

“I have ordered some bacta patches from the infirmary, for your wounds. You will feel better after I’ve put them on your skin.”

Yu nods, following his movements with her big, blue eyes. Kylo washes his hands and applies the patches in a matter of seconds as she sits on the stool wrapped up in his bathrobe.

“I’ve called also called a medical droid to check on you, and make sure you’re not ill. It’s quite big, and it can look scary, but it’s here to help us.” 

Yu doesn’t answer him, but her eyes scan his body from head to toes, and she simply shrugs, as if big and scary things will never really intimidate her. The medidroid enters Kylo’s quarters, and she complies with its instructions without making a fuss. It explains the quarantine procedures in great detail, and then it pricks Yu’s finger to take a sample of blood. She doesn’t cry, simply looking at the droplets of blood on her fingertip with curiosity, and the medidroid begins announcing the results to the Supreme Leader.

“Race: Togruta. Biological sex: female.”

“We already knew that,” quips Kylo.

“Estimated age, in human standard years: five.”

Kylo gulps. He didn’t expect her to be _so_ little, especially after having seen her fold her clothes in that precise, practiced way before her bath. Her big, blue eyes are still on him when the droid gives her several injections and announces that she has clear signs of starvation and a couple of missing teeth. The droid immediately begins organizing a nutritious diet for her, to help her restore vitamins and proteins. Yu says goodbye to the droid when it returns to the infirmary, and Kylo brings her into the living room, where another droid has brought the prescribed food from the cafeteria.

Breakfast reveals itself to be a little more difficult than bathing, since Yu seems suspicious of all the food spread in front of her; she stares but makes no move to try anything. Kylo is not sure he can handle her refusing to eat after having seen how Ladro Furis used to treat her, and especially after learning she suffers from starvation. 

What if she’s so starved she will become sick from only a morsel? What if she continues to refuse to eat? What if she’ll try to insist on returning to Abafar? Is her stomach really gurgling, or Kylo is imagining sounds too now?

“Yu,” he whispers. “This is for you. Why aren’t you eating?”

The girl lowers her gaze. When a single tear escapes her eyes, falling on the bathrobe, Kylo gets up, scraping his chair across the floor, and picks her up, his hand cradling her small head against his chest.

“What’s wrong?” he pleads. “Are you hurting? Do we need to call the medidroid back?”

Yu shakes her head and keeps crying, and Kylo doesn’t know what to do. He wishes Rey would open the Bond right now, because if anyone knows how to deal with another–although smaller–starved woman from a desert planet, it would be her. Kylo had expected Yu to eat eagerly, just as Rey had done at Maz Kanata’s Takodana castle in one of the memories he’d glimpsed when he’d been searching her mind for the location of the map to Luke Skywalker; instead she’s crying in misery. Kylo feels like crying himself, or perhaps returning to Abafar and razing the whole planet to the ground.

“Yu, please, eat something. The medidroid said you need to.”

The child finally emerges from his tunic, her face blotchy and eyes full of tears.

“I–I don’t have anything for you,” she begins, hyperventilating. “I can’t pay! No credits, no food.”

Kylo inhales, and counts from one to ten in his head. Everything clicks now, and it’s so painful that he can’t help losing his appetite. He exhales.

“You don’t have to give me anything, Yu. I’m not Ladro Furis. You will never have to steal again, or pay for your meals, I will provide for everything you’ll need.”

The girl looks at him, bewilderment in her huge eyes, and she scrutinizes his face as though to be sure he’s not tricking her. He nods and then she’s hugging him, hugging him like his body is a lifeline, and she’s about to fall from a cliff. He hugs her back.

He took her from her planet, maybe without thinking too much about what he was doing: she’s solely his responsibility now, and he needs to protect her. She trusts him to do this and he’s damned well going to the best he can. Fear of failure has been a constant companion for his whole life, but he’s not sure he’s ever felt more afraid than he does right now.

***

After breakfast, new clothes and fresh linens are delivered to the Supreme Leader’s apartment, and Yu can finally wear pajamas–black, matching Kylo’s–and rest again between clean sheets. The food ordeal was so tiring that Kylo tries to take a nap with her, but he ends up looking at the ceiling instead, while Yu sleeps and metabolizes what could easily be the first real breakfast of her life. 

While caressing her montrals, checking for unwanted presences in her head, Kylo thinks about how to reconcile his Supreme Leader duties with Yu’s presence in his life. She’s the only child on the Supremacy at this time, and he needs to spend as much time with her as possible. He refuses to consider submitting her to the presence of any type of nanny droid whatsoever. It would be cruel to force her to pass her time with a machine, instead of with another living being. He should teach her how to read, and how to write. He needs to find books to read with her as soon as possible, books that aren’t the _Dark Side Compendium,_ or other seedy volumes he keeps in his personal library.

***

One of the things about Yu that surprises Kylo most during their first days together is how quiet she is. Even when she has nothing to keep her occupied, she sits by him, simply observing what he’s doing without bothering him in the slightest, but it doesn’t seem fair to her–she should have something to play with. A First Order ship is no place for a child and doesn’t have toys on board. Kylo has no idea about what Yu would like, since he can’t recall seeing toys in Ladro Furis’s hovel, and he wonders if she even knows how to play with them at all; she likely had only her own imagination to carry her through life on Abafar. He still remembers with fondness the Tooka doll he used to bring everywhere with him when he was little, and his first calligraphy set. Maybe he should order some flimsi sheets and some coloured pencils, they shouldn’t be too difficult to find.

The memory of the Tooka doll triggers another memory, one that makes his heart clench, but it’s not exactly _his_. When he searched through Rey’s head during the fateful interrogation that woke her powers, he’d seen her making a pilot doll of sorts in her AT-AT dwelling on Jakku, out of rags. There are plenty of sewing droids on board, and fabric, and yarn. However, he doesn’t want to leave the whole process of making a toy for Yu up to them, and he places an order for scrap fabrics, thread, and a needle. No one taught him how to sew, but after seeing Rey sewing her own doll, he thinks he can imitate what she did.

There is barely any coloured fabric available for Yu’s doll. Her new clothes are black, just like his own, and they also mimic his style: black leggings and a long tunic with a belt. She didn’t mourn her old rags at all, since her new dress is warm and comfortable, but the leather boots he’d ordered for her didn’t have the same success: she still likes to walk barefoot.

“Yu,” he calls her. “Come here. I’m making you a doll; let’s decide together what it should look like.”

The pitter-patter of her bare feet precedes her arrival. Dressed all in black, her natural colouring is even more striking: the orange of her little face is warmer than before, and the dull blue of her montrals and her short and chubby lekku are enhanced by the contrast with her clothes. 

“What is a doll?” she asks.

“It’s a toy. You play with it. Didn’t you have toys, on Abafar?”

“Yes! I had stones. And sticks, but I left them behind.”

Yu smiles at the mention of what she considers toys - the first smile he’s ever seen from her. There are dimples on her cheeks, and Kylo has the sudden need to lower his gaze and send her away again so he can remain alone. He takes two strips of black fabric, cutting them as he saw Rey do to make her own doll, and he begins to sew. He stabs a needle into the fabric again and again like it’s the doll’s fault that life is unfair, and short, and cruel. He silently curses anyone who ever decided to have children and then did nothing to avoid fucking up their lives, over and over. Kylo shakes his head, trying to distract himself from the sick feeling taking root in his stomach. He doesn’t trust himself to speak now.

Yu closely observing his every movement. His stitches are irregular and he pricks his fingers more than once–the girl winces in sympathy beside him. The final result is sloppy and uneven like his lightsaber. But when he takes the only orange scrap–surely coming from radar technicians’ vests–to finish making the doll’s head, Yu surprises him, handing him a whitish piece of fabric instead.

“Don’t you want your doll to look like you?”

Yu just shrugs, and then offers him another grin.

While he’s stuffing the doll with scraps his ears begin to ring, and he’s suddenly aware of the vacuum sound of the Force Bond opening and quickly forgets about his musings. _Rey_. The usual bad timing of their connection is almost like a blessing; he can redirect his inner turmoil towards the scavenger instead of the poor doll.

“It’s impressively hard to avoid you, it seems,” she states, piqued, without so much as a greeting. “How did the murder go?”

She’s wearing grey clothing, and her body is on the ground, slumped against something. There is an object in her hand, which, upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be a glass–is she drinking now? He doesn’t take her bait, remaining silent and still so as not to scare Yu, and finishes stuffing the doll. It’s huge, broad-chested, with fair skin. If he didn’t know better, it almost looks like Yu tricked him into making a doll of himself, of all things.

“Tooka got your tongue?” Rey asks. “You’re always so impatient to spew out what’s in your head. Why so silent now?” She gets on her feet, abandoning whatever she had in her hand on the ground–definitely a glass, an empty one. “What are you doing? Are you... sewing?”

Kylo lifts his head, smirking at her, and erects his mental walls, closing her outside of the Bond. Rey is gone, leaving only her glass behind.

***

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Yu is better at sewing than Kylo. She surely learned out of necessity, and now he’s almost sorry he threw her old clothes away. During the evening, while he looks for books to read her on the library database–there is a whole library on this ship, a fact he hadn’t been aware of until he bothered checking–she finishes the doll using the few remaining scraps. 

Kylo is toying with the glass Rey left behind–unfortunately, a mass-produced item, useless to determine her location–when Yu finally shows him the final product of their combined efforts. Now he knows it’s definitely him: it has a mop of black hair made with thread, two button eyes, and a long embroidered triangle right in the middle of its face. Is that supposed to be his nose? Perplexed, he touches the bridge of his own nose as Yu shows her handiwork to him, smiling wide, the gap between her front teeth finally showing. 

“Is that me?” he asks.

“Yes!” she happily exclaims. “It’s you!”

The Supreme Leader feels something strange fluttering in his stomach, and a knot coiling itself tightly in the back of his throat. This is almost the same thing he felt when he touched Rey’s hand through the Force Bond, while she was on Ahch-To. He clears his voice.

“It’s time for bed, Yu. Bring your doll, and I can read something to you, if you want.”

Yu looks at him, surprised. If she had eyebrows, one of them would reach her montrals, by now.

“But I can read.”

She has, again, surprised him, and he feels an odd sense of disappointment at her words; he would have liked to be the one to teach Yu how to read. He’s not sure he can remember how old he was when he learned how to read, but surely he wasn’t _five_ , or any _equivalent of five in human years._ He can recall he didn’t learn from his parents, but from one of his nanny droids, and when he’d told Leia that he could finally read by himself, she complimented him, but she never expressed regret about not being there to teach him. He can’t even remember where Han was at the time. 

“What if I wanted to read to you?” Kylo whispers. “Has no one read to you before?”

Yu shrugs. “No.”

“Of course,” he says. “Go put on your sleeping clothes and then I’ll read you a bedtime story. The story I have found is about a Lady named Corvax, I hope you’ll like it.”

Yu brushes her teeth, changes into her pajamas and buries herself under the covers, ready to listen to the story.

“A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away, before the rise of the Galactic Empire, a woman named Lady Corvax and her husband, Lord Corvax, resided on a planet known as Mustafar, a lush place thriving with life. The two spouses lived in harmony with the natives…”

***

Kylo’s first month with Yu proceeds incredibly smoothly. The little Togruta is almost a ghost, always silent, readily tidying up after herself. She passes her time playing with her doll, drawing with the dax sticks he’s gifted her, or using the reader he’s given her for whenever he’s busy. He’d found her stories and fables from several Outer Rim planets to read by herself, while Lady Corvax’s story remains on his personal reader, reserved for their evenings, to read together.

Physically, Yu is easy to care for, but the emotional toll of taking care of such a damaged, little creature is sometimes hard for Kylo to bear. He knows what kind of life she experienced on Abafar–so similar to Rey’s it’s almost unsettling. Almost as unsettling, sometimes, is just how gentle and patient she is with _him_. She seems to sense how lonely and unwell he is, even if he tries not to show her. To be honest, Kylo has been unwell since before he was born, and it’s as if she knows and is trying to make it up to him by becoming his little shadow.

Usually, Kylo is the one reading to her, but sometimes Yu insists on reading to him instead, proceeding slowly and following the lines with her finger on the screen, often stopping to ask questions.

“Ben, why did Lady Corvax try to bring her husband back?”

“Because she was in love with him, and she couldn’t bear to live without him anymore.”

“What does it mean?”

Kylo has to think for a moment before answering. “It means that you care about someone so much that you would do anything for them.” 

“Are you in love?”

Kylo Ren’s heartbeat speeds up. “Maybe. I’m not sure. There is this woman called Rey, but I don’t think she loves me back.”

“I hope she will love you. So if you die, she will bring you back,” she exclaims, blue eyes full of hope.

“I hope so, too.” He laughs, his voice booming in the quiet bedroom.

***

Some nights sleep doesn’t come, and Kylo lays awake in his bed next to Yu, listening to her breathing and remembering the feeling of helplessness that always accompanied him, from childhood to adulthood. He’s never been truly free, and now, being the Supreme Leader of the First Order just means that his cage is bigger, and armed with cannons. At least, now, he doesn’t have unwanted guests in his head anymore.

The child’s presence on board has caused mixed reactions so far. The First Order officers were astonished the first time he’d brought her to a meeting, letting her sit at his left side–Hux’s usual place, thus forcing the General to stand the whole time. By the end of that first meeting, Yu had drawn and gifted every single officer with a portrait, and a goofy attempt to write down each of their names–Kylo had taught her how to write the alphabet, starting with their own names. Even Hux had received his drawing and, before the following meeting, a padded stool had magically appeared alongside the Supreme Leader’s chair.

This meeting, however, doesn’t go as smoothly as the previous ones. Hux is pushing for attacking the Resistance, claiming that he knows where they’re hiding–he doesn’t–and that Kylo Ren is just stalling–he is–since he’s too much of a coward to kill his own mother–which he is as well. This leads to confrontation, that leads to shouting, that leads to Kylo threatening Hux with his gloved hand, index finger pointing at the General’s chin. 

“Careful, Ren,” Hux spits, ready to walk away, and Kylo refrains from choking him only because Yu is still in the room.

He turns around to lead her away, and finds her petrified on her stool, her tears already falling on the flimsi she was drawing on, smearing the colours. The drawing is of herself, hugging her doll, next to him.

“I’m sorry, Yu. I’m so, so sorry,” he whispers to her, picking her up and bringing her back to his quarters. “I didn’t want to shout and scare you, I would never hurt you in any way.”

Yu stops crying, but her tiny body is still wracked by hiccups when they enter Kylo’s bedroom. He deposits her on the bed, and kneels in front of her, as if to atone for his sins. He’d forgotten that he’s not alone anymore, had almost lost control, and the only one who would be paying for his loss of control is the child. She seems to sense his distress and pats his hair with her tiny hands, as if to tell him that everything will be okay, and he breathes again.

“Who’s Ren?” she asks.

“It’s me. I am Kylo Ren.”

“But your name is Ben,” she observes.

He nods. “Kylo Ren is a name I gave myself a long time ago, when I didn't think I could be Ben anymore. I was scared and hurt and very, very angry and I wanted to be someone else. And being Kylo made me feel important and powerful, but I was still scared and angry.”

“Are you still scared and angry?”

“Sometimes,” he whispers. 

“I think that Ben is a better name.

***

That night, Yu doesn’t sleep well. She mysteriously refused to read Lady Corvax’s story together, and went to bed right after dinner; and now her sleep is troubled, like she’s having nightmares, and isn’t able to wake up. Her forehead is clammy, and she keeps tossing and turning, fine sheets tangling in her short legs. Kylo tries to wake her up, but to no avail. His own mind is in deep turmoil since it looks like something is terribly wrong with her, and the ugliest memories of his own childhood emerge in his head like curd emerges from rotten milk.

“Yu.” 

No reaction from her.

“Yu, wake up. You’re having a bad dream, It’s not real, I swear.” 

Calling her is useless. She keeps moving and scrunching her face without waking up. Kylo decides to take a peek in her head to learn the source of the nightmare–he prays the Force that there is no one preying on her–but as soon as his hand touches her montrals, Rey connects with him, the usual vacuum sound of the Bond opening making his ears pop.

He curses the Force. They both see inside Yu’s head at the same time, they both see Ladro Furis threaten her with his fingers pointed at her chin, yelling, spit flying everywhere, and when the vision ends, Rey sees how Kylo’s hand is touching the child’s forehead while she is plagued by nightmares, lying disquieted in a rumpled bed.

“Who is that?!” Rey shouts, her pupils blown wide. “Why is there a suffering child with you?

Yu finally startles awake at the volume of Rey’s shouting, and looks around for its source. Kylo doesn’t know what to say, but he thinks maybe telling Rey that she has the same look in her eyes that she had back in the forest on Starkiller Base isn’t a good idea. He wants to tell her that Yu is no one, but it isn’t true; he wants to tell her that Yu is only a guest, but that isn’t true either. The closest thing to the truth he could tell Rey is that Yu is a foundling like her, and that he saved her from a life of abuse, but the words refuse to exit his mouth. He just looks at Rey, waiting for her to do something, to do _anything_.

“Did you kidnap her like you did with me?!” she asks, full of rage. “Did you torture her, _Kylo Ren_?”

“No.” Ben’s heart breaks at her words. “Her name is Yu, and she saved me as much as I saved her.”

His mental barriers are down, and a lonely tear cuts across his scarred cheek. Rey grins from the other side of the galaxy, her face almost disfigured with a twisted sort of glee.

“I know where you are,” she spits. “I will find you and I will save that child, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

***

No one sleeps again after the connection dies. Yu, though still a bit frightened, is calmer now, hugging her doll and looking at Ben, who is simply staring at the ceiling as he lays on the bed, tears still streaking across his face. The child extends one of her hands and touches his scar. It’s like a feather, so gentle he almost can’t feel her fingers on his skin.

“Who’s the scary lady?”

“That was Rey,” he mumbles. “I told you about her.”

“Did she give you this scar?”

Ben turns towards Yu, an eyebrow straining toward his hairline. “She did–how do you know?”

Yu shrugs. “I just know.”

Ben exhales, tired. Rey was able to steal the First Order’s location from his mind, but somehow failed to see why he had to take Yu away from Abafar. He knows she’ll come alone, that she will try to talk him into letting Yu come away with her. She’ll try to change his mind the same way she tried to turn him against Snoke, armed only with a shadow of makeup–where she even found that on Ahch-To remains a mystery–but she wouldn’t succeed in turning him this time. 

He will never capitulate, and allow himself to be separated from Yu. First of all, the child will never be safe with the Resistance, and second, he’s a selfish coward who needs this five year old Togruta girl to help him heal his shattered soul. He needs her because he’s a wreck. He needs her because he’s a barren planet plagued by long dead spirits. He needs her because she’s so small, yet so much stronger than him. 

His hands tremble, and something soft gets pushed into them: it’s the doll.

“If you hug him, he keeps you safe. Even from the scary lady,” Yu explains.

“Thank you.”

He complies, hugging the doll close, and falls asleep in a matter of seconds.

  


  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey boards Kylo's ship to take Yu with her. She's up for anything, fighting tooth and nail to save the kid from the Supreme Leader's clutches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: this chapter contains stabbing.

The following week, Rey’s X-Wing docks in one of the main hangars of the Supremacy after having crossed what must have been the whole galaxy. Ben feels her Force signature spike as she tricks his men into letting her inside the flagship without any question whatsoever, and he almost laughs at the turn of events. He knows that the Resistance is low on fuel at the moment, and is frankly curious about how Rey managed to obtain a ship with full tank to literally travel across the stars to kidnap a child. He has to wonder if Leia is behind this useless gesture, still convinced that he’ll go back home with only a push from her new Jedi pet.

“Yu,” he calls out to the child. 

She’s playing with her new droid, a BB-9e unit she had unfortunately fallen in love with during the previous week, and that he’d upgraded with games and leisure coding. After his not so great experience with house droids in his own childhood, he can’t help feeling a bit of dread for her, alone with a machine, but there is no one on board he can really trust with the child’s safety. 

“Rey is here,” he explains, toying with his lightsaber. “I’m going to meet her, and I’ll try to convince her to leave us alone. But if it doesn’t work, I want you to close yourself in the bathroom with BB. They will know what to do, and they will defend you. And so will I.”

Yu nods, getting on her feet.

“Yu, this is very important: if I say the words  _ “I need to talk to Rey alone” _ , you will close yourself into the bathroom with BB right away and do not come out until I come for you. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” she answers, serious. “Is she here to hurt us?”

Ben takes a second, exhaling. “No, I don’t think so. She’s not evil, she just doesn’t understand. Yet.”

With that thought in his mind, Ben opens a communication line with Hux. 

“The scavenger is here. Don’t shoot at her and don’t put trackers on her ship. We only need to talk, and every trooper that tries to go against her will be dead within seconds. Let’s keep the casualties to a minimum.”

“Understood,” Hux says, a hint of defiance in his voice. “Good luck with her, Ren.”

Ben leaves his quarters and quickly finds Rey in one of the main corridors. Several troopers are already on the ground, and she’s there, waiting for him, a satisfied smirk etched on her face. She’s still as fierce as Ben remembers her, but this time she’s dressed all in black, and her hair, free from restraints, is brushing her shoulders. He can barely hold back a genuine smile at her appearance; but his face promptly transforms into a grimace when he reminds himself that Rey is there to take Yu away from him.

“You changed your clothes. Black suits you,” he drones, a corner of his mouth uplifted. “My uncle was popular for his black ensemble, when he was young. Did you take his name, too?”

“Please,” she laughs. “I would never be so stupid as to take the Skywalker name–even if I love your mother very much.”

“You have those eyes again, from the forest,” he whispers. 

“Cut that out. Where’s the girl?”

“Yu is in my quarters. You’re welcome to speak with her and verify that I haven’t kidnapped her, and see with your own eyes that she’s happy and safe here.”

“She needs to be returned to her family. We could contact our allies on Shili, or on Kiros.” Rey retorts.

“She doesn’t have one,” he exhales, looking pointedly at Rey. “She ended up in the hands of a thief, he used her to steal for him at a market.”

Rey doesn’t comment, her gaze downturned. “What you expect me to do then, after I see her?”

“You’re welcome to return to the Resistance straight away, or to remain with us. You’re free to move about as you want.”

Rey keeps silent, and they walk side by side until they reach his door. Ben tries to read her through the Bond, but her head is as fenced as a city under siege, and he commits the error of turning his back to her while pressing in the code to access his quarters; he finds himself with a blaster pointed between his shoulder blades. 

“I know that you have your lightsaber in your rooms,” she explains, unprompted. “I’m just preventing you from using it against me.”

“It’s in my rooms, of course, but I don’t have weapons on me now, and you have a blaster. This isn’t fair.”

“It’s for the greater good. Now open this door and bring me to that poor child.”

Ben can only obey her command. He crosses the threshold and Yu is there in the main room, waiting for him with the black BB unit, hugging her doll.

“Yu, I need to talk to Rey alone,” he says to the child, and her face falls.

She obeys, and swiftly exits the room, closely followed by the droid. In a matter of seconds Ben manages to melt Rey’s blaster with the Force and calls his red saber to him, and quickly turns around to point the weapon at his rival’s neck.

Rey is faster, and she produces her new lightsaber from a hidden holster under her vest, its yellow blade clashing quickly against his red, broken one.

“Nice colour,” he spits through gritted teeth. “Do you even know what a Jedi Sentinel  _ is, _ at least?”

She disengages, trying to hit him again, but the living room is too small for a proper fight, and she ends up cutting his dining table in two, black plastoid and scorching hot sparks flying everywhere. She’s good at this, has gotten more precise, and if they were fighting in the open she would have already put him in extreme difficulty, but she’s currently limited by the narrow space, a space that he’s familiar with.

Ben tries to disarm her, but she parries swiftly, her own saber blocking his quillions from burning her skin.  _ A scar for a scar, _ Snoke would say, but Ben dispels the sickening image and retreats before he can truly harm her. Harming her will never be his goal.

“I’m not here–” she shouts. “I’m not here to show you how much historical trivia I have memorized from the Jedi texts!”

Another hit, and she cuts through a whole wall of white lights, in a shower of sparks, causing the room to fall into partial shadow.

“And what are you here for, pray tell? To kidnap a child?”

“No,” she cries, preparing a downward blow against his lightsaber. “I’m here to prevent you from using her Force sensitivity for your own evil, egoistical deeds.”

_ What. _

Yu is  _ not _ Force sensitive, or he would have known it from the first moment he saw her. Rey is lying. Ben’s throat closes all of a sudden, and Rey’s blow disarms him, the red saber falling from his hand while he can only stare at his rival, mouth hanging open in surprise. She catches the weapon mid-fall and, without thinking about it twice, pierces his liver with it. 

Handle still firmly in her hands, she looks at him like she can’t believe what just happened, like she can’t believe what she did to him. Everything is happening so fast that he’s not even aware of pain; through the ringing in his ears, he can only hear Yu crying from behind the bathroom door. Ben is almost shocked by the intensity of Rey’s gaze, glued to his face, her pupils blown wide.

She extinguishes the blade, shaking her head, and the smell of charred meat permeates the room. There is a hole in his abdomen, but he doesn’t even care: the hole he feels growing in his chest is bigger, and far more deadly. After failing Rey, losing her after killing Snoke, he’s now failed Yu as well; he’s going to die instead of keeping her safe as he’d promised her.

“I–I’m sorry,” he blurts out, not sure to whom he’s talking, as his body collapses on the ground.

Rey’s face is streaked with tears, her mouth hanging open.

“Don't leave her,” he rasps, sweat beading over his face. “Don't leave her alone again. Please.”

Rey cries. Her trembling hand reaches for his gaping wound; her fingers are sweaty and dirty, and the contact with his charred flesh burns so much that he doesn’t even realize that his skin is knitting itself back together. Through the pain, he is aware that Yu is still crying in the bathroom, and then he doesn’t feel anything anymore; all of his energy is slowly abandoning his body. Closing his eyes is a blessing he didn’t knew he craved, and darkness quickly overtakes him, Rey’s tear-filled face the last image etched upon his retinas.

***

He wakes up all of a sudden, finding himself under Hux’s merciless scrutiny. The General smirks, observing how Ben’s living quarters are in shambles; his bathroom door is laying opened like a can of Nabooan scalefish, and Yu’s BB unit lies on the pavement, sadly cut in half, sparks flying everywhere. 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux drones. “It looks like your scavenger took the child away. She escaped– _ again _ –and we weren’t able to track her ship. Because you ordered us not to.” 

Ben gets on his feet, panting with pain, the ordeal of getting stabbed in the abdomen finally taking a toll on his body. His amber eyes meet Hux’s icy ones, making the General tremble under his gaze.

“I know how to track her from afar. Ready the fleet and contact the Knights, we’ll soon find where the Resistance is hiding.”

***

Rey has never cried so much in her life, save maybe for when her parents abandoned her. She doesn’t know why she stabbed Ben, and she still can’t believe it happened so quickly, in a matter of seconds, while he was distracted by what she’d just said. Her hands tremble on the X-Wing controls, as tears flow copiously from her eyes, tickling her dry skin and wetting her lap. Did he truly have no idea about the kid’s Force sensitivity? Had she just committed the same mistake made by Luke, thinking that Ben had been guilty simply because he'd been involved in something and assuming the worst, almost killing him? The Dark Side had tempted her for the second time, and she gave in to it.

Rey doesn’t even reach the Mid Rim before Yu wakes up, asking for Ben Solo, and Rey is glad to be able to reassure the child that he’s alive. In order to flee the Supremacy she’d had to knock the Togruta cub out with the Force, or bringing her away from that bathroom would have been next to impossible. The BB unit had tried to electrocute her multiple times, and when she finally reached the kid, the little rapscallion had bitten her forearm and her hand without even giving her a chance to explain that she was there to save her from the Supreme Leader’s clutches, and had proceeded to eject her through the door in a surprising outburst of the Force, before fainting a few seconds later. 

Rey knew she wouldn’t have been able to take the child if she hadn’t exhausted herself, using her raw, untamed power. Rey’s tears over what she’d done to Ben flowed unstoppably as she’d strapped Yu’s senseless body into the borrowed X-Wing she’d used to reach the Outer Rim, before departing as quickly as possible from the First Order flagship.

“I want Ben,” Yu whines, after regaining consciousness.

“You don’t know what you want,” Rey answers, sniffing.

“Do you?” the child retorts.

Unsettled, Rey doesn’t answer and keeps piloting. She has to be careful, and avoid wasting fuel. The travel back to the Resistance will unfortunately be very long, and she selfishly hopes Yu won’t be this hostile for the whole journey back. She doesn’t want to fight with the child, already haunted by her guilt, and by thoughts of  _ him. _

***

Yu doesn’t even look at Rey’s face after they land on Birren–where what remains of the Resistance is hiding–but she reluctantly takes her hand. It’s a small, bittersweet victory after all the biting and the crying. She didn’t have shoes with her on the Supremacy, but she doesn’t seem to mind walking bare footed. Rey tries to show her around, but the child doesn’t look particularly impressed with any of the people on base, nor with the dilapidated machinery crammed on the small planet. 

The truth is that Rey has no idea about children, nor how to handle them. She calls for reinforcements; Rose and Finn answer immediately and are introduced. Yu isn’t hostile towards them, but she can’t suppress the instinct to hide behind Rey’s legs after they approach her, which Rey finds odd since she’s the one that all but kidnapped her.

“This is Finn,” Rey begins. “He’s the first friend I made in my whole life. And this is Rose, the second friend I made; we met after a huge battle,” she says, trying to not think about Ben and what they had briefly shared before everything had ended so badly on Crait; friendship seems too small a word for what they'd lost.

Yu nods, her gaze dwelling briefly on both people. She’s not particularly interested in any of them, and soon occupies herself moving a pebble between her bare feet.

“Did he hurt her?” Finn asks, and Rey shakes her head.

“She looks a little skinny, but I’d say that she’s healthy,” Rose interjects. “Are you hungry, little one?”

Yu shrugs, but Rey’s stomach gurgles loudly, making everyone laugh, and they head for the cafeteria.

***

“Aren’t you going to finish that?” Rey asks Yu, her mouth full of food.

“No,” Yu answers, not caring about her dinner and instead drawing on a napkin with a snapped pencil she found on the dirty floor of the meager hangar the Resistance uses as a cafeteria. 

“More for me, then,” Rey replies, stealing the almost untouched dish and finishing its contents in a matter of minutes.

“Aren’t you happy to be here?” Finn asks Yu. “We can be friends and we can play together.”

“No,” Yu repeats. “I miss Ben.”

“Wait until you meet BB-8. He’s orange, round and awesome.”

“The BB Ben gave me was black. You can’t top that.”

“Whoa, Finn exclaims. “I’d like to think that we can do better than–ouch!”

Rose interrupts him with a punch to his shoulder, and sits down across from Yu. “Do you miss your family?”

“I don’t have one. Only Ben.”

Rose smiles, winking at Rey “It looks like our Supreme Leader is a dad now.”

Yu starts trembling, and the pencil she’s using to draw falls on the ground. Rose takes her in her arms then, arranging her on her lap, and Yu hides her face in the crook of her neck, crying silently.

“I’m sure that you’ll be able to see your dad again soon,” Rose whispers to her.

Rey shakes her head. “Please, Rose. Don’t–”

“He was the one taking care of her; that’s what a dad does. And I’m sure he’ll come looking for her sooner rather than later.”

“Rose,” Finn exhales. “This is a war, and Kylo Ren is our greatest enemy.”

“I still think that saving what we love is the only thing that makes us Human–or Togruta. He’ll come, believe me.”

***

The three of them retrieve a mattress from a storage room to prepare a bed for Yu in the little house where Rey currently dwells. It’s a simple place with two rooms, isolated away from the noisy barracks and hangars since she needs silence to study the Jedi Texts, and plenty of space to practice with her new lightsaber; she’s glad for it–being in crowded places is sometimes still too much for her. She lives within easy walking distance, and Finn and Rose try to visit her as often as they can, sometimes bringing Poe and other Resistance members.

The makeshift bed is ready within minutes, and Rey is soon alone with the child again, her friends wishing them goodnight and returning to the main base. She wishes she at least had BB-8 with them, to keep Yu distracted somehow.

“Let’s get ready to sleep? I have a... pajamas for you,” Rey announces, producing an old shirt of hers–she needs to see if she can find something else for the child, down at the barracks. “Do you need help?”

“I don’t want to go to sleep yet. I’m bored,” Yu says, as she removes her black clothes–so similar to Ben’s–and folds them neatly. “I don’t have my reader.”

There are scars on the child’s neck and wrists, and Rey pretends to not see them while the child changes. “Oh? What were you reading?”

“We were reading Lady Corvax’s story. Do you know it?”

Rey has never heard of it. “Sure!”

“Tell me what happens in chapter twelve.”

“Uhm,” Rey begins. “Lady Corvax throws a party at her castle, inviting her best friends, and they have... a very good time?” 

“I don’t think so. In chapter eleven, Lady Corvax destroys her planet to resu–to  _ resurrect _ her husband. He’s dead, but she loves him too much. She kills all the life on the planet, but I don’t know if he comes back or not. Do you know?”

Rey’s face falls. “Of course he’s reading you some grim and edgy fable. I’m afraid I don’t know; I don’t think I know any stories you would like, little one. Let’s try to sleep without one?”

***

Ben’s skin is extremely soft, and Rey can’t stop touching the infinite expanse of his chest. He’s asleep beside her, his shape solid and clear, the sound of his breathing as musical as life itself in her ears. She closes her eyes, and listens, her fingertips roaming down, across his abdomen, and–

“Angry Lady?”

_ What. _

“Angry Lady!” The baby Togruta is calling her, and Rey wakes up alone in her room, the version of Ben Solo that’s haunted her dreams since Crait disappearing with her drowsiness.

“My name is Rey.” 

“Angry Rey. I can’t sleep.”

Rey exhales. “Count banthas. It’s boring, it will help you fall asleep.” She can’t remember having been so tired in her whole life as she feels right now.

“I need the toilet. I don’t know where it is.”

Rey groans. “It’s the small door on the right, at the end of the hall. I’ll accompany you.”

She is so tired that a migraine is starting to bloom behind her eyelids, and she massages her temples as she waits for the child to finish her business, hoping that she’ll be fast. She mercifully is, and they return to her room.

“I can’t sleep here. The mattress is uncomfy, and I miss Ben. Bring me back please.”

Rey snorts. “I... don’t have enough fuel to do that. Just lie on your bed, stop thinking about him, and you’ll eventually fall asleep.”

“You were thinking about him too. You were sleeping with him.”

Rey’s face explodes in a flourish of pink, nicely contrasting with the purple of the bags under her eyes. She’d forgotten that the child has the Force; she’s lucky that her dream wasn’t too raunchy this time.

“Are you his wife? Like Lady Corvax?”

Rey hides her face in her hands. This is pure torture.

“Did he tell you this? That I’m his wife?”

“No,” Yu states. “He said he’s in love with you.”

Rey blushes again, her whole face burning.

“It’s definitely time to sleep now. I won’t tell you twice. Go to bed.”

***

The air is cold, inside and out, and Rey is fully awake now, despite her weariness. She takes a drink of Corellian whiskey straight from the bottle Poe had given her last month, since she can’t remember where she put the only glass she keeps in her dwelling. The child’s confession left her deeply unsettled, even as she has to admit she was already somewhat aware of the Supreme Leader’s feelings for her. Maybe she just didn’t have the courage to accept his feelings as real, and chose to live a lie because it felt safer. 

She misses him. She misses the understanding, gentle person she met on Ahch-To to the point that he’s become a recurrent fantasy, waiting for her every night in her most secret dreams. But she can’t trust him anymore, not after the Supremacy, after Crait. She’d fallen in love with an idea, with a man that was hers for only a handful of minutes; a mere image projected across the stars - not the man who chose to keep attacking the Resistance, decimating their fleet. 

Rey huffs. The vacuum sound of the Force Bond, popping her ears as it opens, is almost welcome this time, and Ben soon appears behind her.

“Hey,” she greets him, her gaze downcast, almost expecting he'll immediately bring up her attempt to kill him. 

"How’s Yu?" he pleads instead. 

Fascinating. It’s like he can't think about anything else. “She’s well, but she can’t sleep.”

“And neither can you,” he observes. “You’re so similar to her, it almost hurts.”

“That’s really why you took her from her planet? You truly didn’t know she had the Force?”

Ben puffs his cheeks. “It’s the truth! I would have saved her either way, and not only because she reminded me of you–but because it was the right thing to do. But I  _ would _ be lying if I said that what I feel for you didn't play any part in this." 

Rey turns around. Ben is close, so close that she could touch him by simply lifting her hand. He looks weary, his pale skin now ashen, grey shadows circling heavily his eyes. Even his hair, usually luscious and silky, looks greasy and uncombed. It’s strange to see his face without scars again, and she barely suppresses the instinct to caress his right cheek. All the wounds she gave him are only a faint memory, only the wounds no one can see remain between the two of them now.

“You look like shit,” Rey smiles.

“Thank you. I take it you don’t have mirrors on your base," he chuckles back.

This is the first time they’ve seen each other without fighting since Crait. It feels good, and she's enraptured by the faint lines on his face, how his skin wrinkles around his eyes at the genuine smile he gave her. It’s hypnotic, she’s weak, and she says the first thing that crosses her mind.

“I did want to take your hand, you know. Ben’s hand.”

“I know,” he says, biting his lower lip.

His eyes are closed, and the temptation to take his hand now is strong, so strong that Rey has to physically turn away, and she changes the topic of conversation.

“How does Lady Corvax’s story end?”

“She fails to bring her husband back from death, condemning him to wander aimlessly in the World Between Worlds, and her planet becomes an uninhabitable hellscape.”

“I don’t think she’ll ever sleep again, if I tell Yu this story,” Rey exclaims, piqued. “Do you have any better tips to help her sleep?”

Ben offers her something then. It looks like a doll of sorts, with a strange, bulky shape. Rey instinctively reaches for it, even if she knows her hand will pass through the toy like it was made of air. But it doesn’t. The toy is solid against her hand, the texture of its fabric rough and soft at the same time. She takes it, bewildered by what just happened, stunned by the idea of what they could be able to do together, if only they weren’t on opposite sides of a war.

“She’ll sleep with this, believe me,” he says as the Bond snaps shut.

***

Ben’s heart is broken over how much he misses Yu. And Rey as well, even if he should still be angry at her after what she put him through; but, he’s never harboured negative feelings towards her, not even after Starkiller Base, and he’s not about to begin now. He should have confessed, should have told her that he missed her, but giving her the doll was of paramount importance; for Yu, and for the whole galaxy as well. This is likely the only opportunity he’ll have in this personal war with Rey, to take advantage of the situation, to turn the stakes in his favour. 

Hoping that he put enough stuffing into the doll, he activates the homing beacon in his hand. After a couple of flickers, the feeble blue light activates, holoprojecting a portion of a map in front of him, showing him an area of the Inner Rim. 

He smirks, seeing the pointer blink around Birren, and laughs. Of course she’s  _ there. _

***

Ben was right. Since she received what definitely looks like a homemade replica of him–bushy hair and everything–Yu finally sleeps through what remains of the night. Rey is able to sleep like she normally does; with Ben at her side in her dreams, his forgiveness giving her strength. 

Leia visits them for the first time that afternoon, accompanied by BB-8, bringing flimsi sheets and a couple of coloured pencils with her. The base is no place for a child, and there was no way she could find toys for a five year old on such a short notice. Rey is sitting on her bed when the General enters the small house, and promptly gets on her feet to properly greet her and introduce her to the child. Yu, who had been listening to Rey talk about her “adventures” on Jakku, hides quickly behind her legs while BB approaches her, beeping inquisitively, his round eye focusing on the child.

“Hello, little one,” Leia says, crouching. “I’m Ben’s mom.”

Hearing those words tumble from Leia’s lips makes Rey’s heart almost skip a beat. As is everyone else on base, she’s aware that the General is Ben’s mother, but the woman hasn’t openly acknowledged the fact; finally hearing those words leaving her mouth is kind of astounding. 

_ Ben is Leia's son _ . She hated Leia’s son. She almost killed Leia’s son. And she misses Leia’s son so much that waking up alone every morning steals her breath away and breaks her heart into a thousand pieces.

Yu comes out from behind Rey’s legs, and slowly approaches Leia. “I miss Ben.”

“I miss him too,” Leia says, a bittersweet smile blooming on her lips. “I can’t even tell you how much.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because it would take days, and you would fall asleep while I’m still babbling like an old hag, my child.”

Rey blinks repeatedly, trying to not cry in front of Yu and Leia, but to no avail. She crouches, pretending to check on BB’s antenna, closes her eyes, and lets the tears flow.

***

That evening, after leaving Yu asleep in her room under BB-8’s watchful gaze, Rey lies on her bed, exhausted. She still needs to read at least a couple of pages of the Jedi texts, but her eyelids are so heavy that she caves and closes her eyes for a second, hoping to not fall asleep. Obviously, it doesn’t work: because when she opens them again, Ben is with her. She never falls asleep that quickly, and now she’s already dreaming of him; in this one he’s strangely clothed, and he’s sitting on the end of the bed instead of next to her, looking at her with a curious expression on his face.

“Come here,” she whispers. “I think I need a hug, or two.”

Ben looks around, as if Rey could have been speaking to someone else, and she smiles, patting the spot next to her. He crawls over, making room for himself between the wall and her; curiously, the mattress looks smaller than usual, since the bed Rey always envisions in her dream is bigger than her real one. 

“I’m so tired...” she begins. “Being wrong is exhausting. I understand now why the real you always has bags under his eyes.”

Ben snorts, and Rey slithers between his arms. He answers tentatively, embracing her slowly, his hands roaming over her back. He’s so warm, warmer than usual, and she basks in his hug, humming contentedly, cushioning her head in the crook of his neck and inhaling his scent. Tonight he smells different, better than on other nights, almost as if he is there for real, and not just in a dream fueled by her loneliness. 

“I hate how I was wrong about everything. Yu really misses Ben, and I’ve caused her so much pain by snatching her away. I thought I was in the right.” Tears are already pooling in Rey’s eyes. “But I wasn’t, and she’s the one paying for my errors.”

Ben kisses her forehead, letting her vent her frustrations, and Rey cries silently in his arms, her hands creasing his tunic.

“But the thing that I hate the most,” Rey continues, her voice broken. “Is that I never stopped wanting him, not even after Crait, not even when I thought he was evil, irredeemably evil. I’ve wondered for months what was wrong with me, and it turns out that the evil one between the two of us was  _ me _ .”

“You’ll never be evil,” Ben whispers, and Rey scrambles on the mattress, disengaging from his warm embrace.

“What?” she exclaims. “Why are you talking?”

Ben’s eyes are comically wide. “What? We’ve always talked through the Bond.”

Realization hits Rey, her face quickly reddening with a healthy, embarrassed colour. “I–I thought you were a dream.”

“Interesting,” he smirks. “Do you dream of me often, then?”

Rey’s face becomes even more red, and Ben’s hand sneaks across the mattress, touching hers. She doesn’t retract it, and he pulls her by her wrist, making her tumble between his arms again. His eyes are wild, luminous and dark, and his voice is deep and enticing. Rey closes her eyes, inhaling his intoxicating scent. They haven’t touched through their Bond since the night on Ahch-To, she never thought it would be possible again. But here they are, across the stars yet in the same bed, his hands reverently caressing her face as his eyes burn holes in her soul.

“You said you never stopped wanting me,” he whispers, biting his lower lip. 

She’s torn between slapping him and kissing him, so she does both, in that order: she hits his right cheek–the one that used to host  _ her _ scar–and then she crashes her mouth against his. She’s kissed Ben innumerable times during her dreams, but the lips she’s nibbling on now are real, and hot, as is the sneaky tongue exploring her mouth, making her whole body shiver.

“What was that for?” he asks, high cheekbones pink with excitement and a feral light in his eyes that could have scared her, once.

“For making me want to beg for your forgiveness, while you’re the one that should be asking for mine,” she whispers.

He combs her hair from her face, caressing her forehead, and kisses her lips again. “Yu is the one that needs to forgive you. You never wronged me–technically, we’re still enemies at opposite sides of a war.”

“You’re insufferable!” she seethes. “You’re almost making me want to stab you again and again.”

“Next time, maybe,” he murmurs against her lips, right hand sneaking under her shirt, stroking her breasts while she grabs his chin, angling his face to better kiss him.

She’s vicious, all teeth, and tongue, and he pinches her nipple in retaliation, making her writhe under him. Rey tugs at his turtleneck, opening it, and he leaves her breasts to help her, removing his undershirt as well. Her hands land immediately on his chest, but he swats them away, grabbing her shirt and tearing at the fabric, ripping it down the middle and exposing her naked chest to his perusal.

“You’re crazy,” she pants. “Yu could wake up at any moment.”

“Close the door then. I’m going to fuck you and there is nothing that will stop me.”

“No, you won’t,” she answers, turning the key with the Force. “I don’t have an implant.”

He nods. “I’m still making you come. Next time we see each other, you  _ will _ have that implant, and I  _ will _ fuck you.”

“You’ll fuck me after you beg for my forgiveness,” she seethes, fondling her own breasts.

He hooks his fingers in her waistband, and her trousers suffer the same fate as her shirt; the cool air of the room hits her moist cunt, making her shiver. Ben’s eyes roam across her pale skin and she swears she can feel them caressing her as though they were invisible hands, while his real fingers travel slowly from her knees to the apex of her thighs, causing goosebumps to erupt all over her body. When he finds her wet cunt she jolts, closing her eyes, and he starts exploring her folds, methodically, until he finds her clit.

“I hate you,” she murmurs, and he attacks her lips again, biting her and stroking her mouth with his tongue just like his fingertips are stroking her bundle of nerves.

His eyes never leave hers, and she tries to trap his right hand with her thighs, but he quickly slides his right knee between her legs, forcing them open, his fingers working swiftly on her now drenched cunt.

“I will never ask for your forgiveness,” he sibilates in her ear, while he pinches her clit between thumb and forefinger. “There is nothing to forgive, is there?”

Rey’s mouth opens in a silent cry, and she’s coming; his assault on her cunt is unrelenting, causing electric jolts to travel through her limbs, and her whole body feels alive for the first time in her life. Her hand travels down his torso, finding his erection through his trousers, and her fingers around his hard cock are the only thing able to anchor her to reality while another orgasm hits her; his fingertips are pushing rhythmically against her nub, his hand and the creamy skin of her inner thigh stained with her juices. She wishes this moment could be eternal, but the Bond closes as quickly as it opened, robbing her of the chance to return the favour and admire his body writhing under hers.

“Serves you right,” she pants, alone, in the middle of the bed.

***

Bond severed, Ben finds himself back in his quarters, his cock still hard as a rock and Rey’s smell on his hands. He can’t believe what just happened, how she just told him to close the door and then let him ravish her, coming on his fingers. Her flavour is incredible, intoxicating, and he noses hungrily at his knuckles as he frees his erection from the constraints of his trousers. 

She was about to touch him and it’s with this thought etched into his mind that he brings his fingers to his lips, cleaning them one after the other with his tongue, and curses their Bond and its awful timing. Imagining it’s Rey’s hand finally touching him, he strokes his cock furiously, ending in a quick, unsatisfying orgasm, white ropes of cum staining his skin. The next time they meet, he’ll come inside of her. That thought is almost enough to make him hard again.

After cleaning himself, he activates his commlink, contacting Hux. “General, we have their position. The Resistance is in the Inner Rim.”

“Excellent.” Hux’s voice croaks through the device. “Which planet?”

Ben pauses for a second. “Pasher. They’re using an old underground research facility. Bring the whole fleet there, in precisely one month. I’m going to regroup with the Knights first, and will meet you there in a month’s time. It is time to finally annihilate the Resistance.”

***

During the following days, Rey and Yu slowly adjust to living together. The child is nearly always quiet, never asking for help, and eats her vegetables in silence and without complaint; Rey doesn’t know if she should take it as a positive or a negative trait. It’s clear that she’s used to being alone, and Ben was right: Rey and Yu really do have many things in common. Like Rey, the child can’t remember her parents, having found herself left behind on a desert planet all of a sudden, and lived under the thumb of a cruel man who had no qualms about enslaving her. 

Yu is very good at keeping herself occupied. She draws on the flimsies Leia brought her, or she plays with her doll, or with pebbles and sticks she’s collected while wandering in the woods. BB-8’s presence helps, but the child still remembers with extreme fondness the black BB Unit Rey cut in two on the Supremacy; she frequently reminds Rey how much she misses it and her melancholy can be hard to bear. Sometimes she simply observes what happens around her, listening intently to what everyone says, but very rarely talks, unless encouraged. 

After her outburst on the Supremacy, Yu never uses the Force again. Rey can’t help wondering if she’s aware of her powers, and in what capacity. Rey decides she probably isn’t–since even Ben hadn’t been able to perceive her Force sensitivity, and Rey herself had to directly enter her head through the Force Bond to see it.

One afternoon, before her training session, Rey asks Yu if she would like to watch her.

“Yes,” she answers, and they walk in the woods until they find some rocks.

Rey sits on the ground with her legs crossed, and she begins lifting a couple of rocks, making them spin in mid air.

“Ben did that too!” Yu exclaims. “He always made my pencils spin, just looking at them. I liked when he did that.”

“You could do the same thing, you know? You only need a bit of training.”

“No,” Yu says, her face somber. “I can’t.”

“You can do the things that Ben and I can do, I know you can. I’ve seen you do it. There is no need to hide it, you’re safe here.”

“No,” Yu repeats, and her eyes quickly fill with tears. “You are wrong.”

She runs away, back to the house.

“Yu!” Rey shouts. “Come back!”

She starts running as well, stopping only when she reaches the child’s room. Yu is inside, and she’s crying with her head hidden under her cushion, only the tips of her lekku visible, small body racked by sobs. Rey doesn't know what to do: she doesn’t know how to give a child what she never received from her own parents. Tentatively, she gets on the bed, and picks Yu up, hugging her tightly, and hopes it will be enough.

“Ben doesn’t know. Don’t tell him,” she sniffs.

“But he does know–he knows as much as I do.”

“No!” she wails. “He will not want me now! He will leave like my parents.”

Rey feels her stomach plummet. “Yu, what happened with your family?”

“I scared them, and they left me behind.”

She squeezes the little girl in her arms, her heart knowing exactly how much she’s suffered, and how much she’s suffering in this very moment. Rey knows exactly what kinds of things she went through while on Abafar, and how alone she must have felt until she’d met Ben. Yes, Rey knows exactly what it feels like to Yu–because she’s felt all of it, too.

“I will  _ never _ leave you behind. I traversed the whole galaxy to protect you, because I thought you would be safer here.”

“I was safe with Ben,” Yu whispers between tears.

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at this wonderful fanart made by my dear friend KarmaDash_is_ShippingTrash!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, Ben reaches Birren–and Yu–using the beacon hidden inside the doll. But he's not alone.  
> How will Rey react?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm absolutely floored by all your fantastic comments. Dear readers, thank you so much for loving Yu as much as I do!
> 
> You can find me on Twitter: @persimonne666

Ben arrives on Birren a week after the encounter with Rey, on a moonless night. Following the bluish light of the homing beacon hidden inside Yu’s doll, he quickly finds Rey’s small house in the woods, and lands his TIE interceptor a reasonable distance away, hidden amongst the trees. The house’s main door is bolted, but it’s nothing he can’t overcome, and he silently slides inside. He can sense two distinct Force signatures in two different rooms. The realization that the smaller one is Yu’s hits him like a dreadnought, making his hand tremble as he opens the door leading to her bedroom. She really _is_ Force sensitive, and he really had been too blind to notice it–so blind that he didn’t even try. 

The obnoxious BB unit is in the room, in standby mode, in a corner. Ben can barely discern its round shape in the shadow, but the blinking red light in its optical lense betrays its presence. He tries to sneak as furtively as he can, and kneels beside Yu’s bed, quickly checking on her with a hand on her small head. Her montrals are warm, and she’s dreaming of him - his dream self is making her pencils rotate with the Force; he’s relieved to find no unwanted presences in her head. He leaves the room as silently as he came in, heading towards Rey’s signature.

He quietly opens her unlocked door and finds her asleep, her breathing calm and regular. Closing the door behind him, he lets the lock click loudly into place in the silence of the room. Rey wakes up with a start, finding him on his feet in front of the door, his hand still on the key and his forefinger on his lips, pleading silence.

“Can I?” he asks, approaching the bed. She doesn’t move from the middle of the mattress.

“What are you doing here?” She asks breathlessly, sounding at once relieved and apprehensive. 

“Asking for forgiveness,” he answers, straddling her body, framing her waist with his thighs. 

She smirks in response, and he cups her face as she buries her fingers in his hair, bridging the gap between their mouths. Despite everything, Rey remains the hungrier between the two of them, always ready to fight, always ready for physical contact–which he is more than happy to provide. She would stab him and fuck him in the span of minutes, if he’d let her, and the thought makes him smile into her mouth, as she licks and nibbles on his lower lip.

“I have that implant now,” she pants, quickly pushing him away from her, making space to remove her top, exposing her chest to his gaze.

At her words, Ben's heart misses a beat. He has already seen every part of her, and despite having touched her in her most intimate place already, having made her come with his hands, the sight of her body - bared for _him_ \- still takes his breath away. His ungloved hand glides against the soft skin of her abdomen, sliding slowly towards her left breast, and suddenly the base’s main alarm blares up, its shrill noise interrupting them. 

Ben exhales. “I’m guessing my fleet just arrived. They’re a bit early.”

“What?” Rey exclaims. “This is–this isn’t the Force connecting us?”

“I’m afraid not,” he drones, quickly abandoning the bed. “I’d hoped to have more time with you first, to keep my promise. And I still intend to.”

“Wait!” she cries, “How did you find us?” 

He unlocks the door and flees towards the woods, without looking back. 

***

Rey sits on her bed half-naked, shocked, for what it feels like an eternity, as the base alarm continues to blare. Ben had been there, for real, and they’d almost had sex. He’d known where they were hiding for who knows how long, and he’d talked about an incoming fleet: she can’t stop the dread that swiftly fills her heart. Shaking her head, she changes herself into her day clothes, trying to distract herself as best as she can. Someone knocks at the door, and she recognizes Yu’s touch.

“Rey?” she calls. 

“Come in.”

The child stands in front of the bedroom door, Ben’s doll clutched tightly at her chest. “What is this noise?” she asks. “I had a dream, and Ben was here.”

Indeed he was. Rey is about to tell her not to worry about the alarm, but someone pounds on the main door: it’s Finn, shouting, and extremely agitated.

“He’s here! Rey, you need to bring Yu away, he’s here for her!”

Rey knows that’s not entirely true, and her fist tightens around her lightsaber: Ben was here to have sex with her. Or perhaps to distract her with sex until something else could happen? She picks Yu up, despite the child’s protests, and returns her to her room; Rey tucks her back into bed and implores her to stay put. 

“You need to stay here until I can figure out what’s happening, Yu. I need to keep you safe.”

The child does not reply. Rey returns to the main door and finds it unbolted; Ben didn’t even bother closing it properly on his way out.

“What do you know?” she asks Finn.

“Seven Star Destroyers just came out of hyperspace over our heads, without even bothering to use cloaking devices. If that’s not a full fledged attack, I don’t know what is.”

Rey’s face falls. Feeling used, she has to take Finn’s arm to steady herself, because right now she doesn’t trust her legs to bear her weight. “Have you seen _him_?”

“No, but Poe just commed to tell me Ren contacted Leia a minute ago. We’re waiting for instructions, but everyone is taking their place, getting ready for the fight.”

She exhales, her heart beating erratically. She feels stupid, she feels weak, she feels like she wants to die. 

“I need to make sure that Yu stays where she is. She’s awake, and I may need to... knock her out to keep her safe.”

Finn nods, and Rey reaches to open Yu’s door again, as quietly as she can. Her face falls when she sees the empty cot and the open window. Poor BB-8 is rolling on the floor in circles, distressed. She’s gone, presumably into the woods. Rey curses loudly, and activates her double bladed lightsaber; she tears out of the house and runs towards the base, leaving a bewildered Finn behind.

***

As Ben disembarks his TIE, he finds the General already waiting for him. She’s alone, as per his request, standing on the small landing pad facing what was once one of their estates, now almost unrecognizable after the Resistance started using it as a permanent base. The alarms on the base are still blaring, but the shrill sound soon dies, a deafening silence taking its place.

His heart pounds as he approaches Leia, and his head feels suddenly empty, as if all the things he wanted to say to his mother just disappeared into thin air, leaving room to the darkest turmoil only, a black cloud of fear taking possession of his whole being. He feels like he’d be puking, if only he’d eaten anything during the past days. Sneaking onto a planet and into his soulmate’s house with the intent of having his way with her had proven to be far easier than the prospect of facing his mother, his last living relative, after years of isolation from each other.

The General is old. Her dark hair has grey streaks in it now, and deep lines are carved on her face, lines of sorrow, of loneliness, and pain. Ben wonders how many lines are there because of him. He wishes he could tell her he’s sorry, but when he opens his lips nothing comes out, and his whole body trembles like a leaf while he waits for something, for anything to happen. Leia looks at him, lifting her right hand. Ben closes his eyes, waiting for the blow to hit, but instead his mother’s hand caresses his cheek, her touch so delicate that he might have missed it, if not for her warmth seeping into his skin.

“That’s curious,” Leia says. “Last week I was telling Yu how much I miss you, and here you are, after only a few days. I'm so sorry, Ben. I should have told Luke, told you that I missed you many, many years ago. I hope you can forgive me.”

Ben’s body crumples at her feet, his knees taking the brunt of his weight. Leia strokes his hair and his bowed face, uncaring about his tears wetting her hands.

“You did a good job with Yu, giving her what you didn’t receive from Han and me; what you deserved from us both.” Leia’s voice is broken, but she keeps talking. “She’s a good kid. I’m glad you found each other. And I’m glad you found Rey again, she needs you as much as you need her.”

Ben nods, and tries to clean his face with his sleeve. He lifts his head, meeting his mother’s gaze: she’s crying as well, her expression is pained and full of guilt, but he can feel her hope through her tears. 

“Ben!” a voice calls him from the nearby woods, and he turns, mouth opening in wonder. 

It’s Yu, and he can already perceive her Force signature, stronger than before, so bright and luminous against the dark of the night. She feels like a tiny star zooming between the trees, and he’s shocked again by how he’d been completely unaware of her Force sensitivity before Rey pointed it out to him. The child keeps running towards him, doll in hand and no shoes in sight, and he welcomes her with open arms; her enthusiasm is almost enough to knock him over.

“Ben?” she exclaims, panting into his shoulder, as her little arms loop around his neck. “I missed you so much!”

He squeezes her back so hard that she squeaks. “I missed you, too, Yu,” he whispers, his eyes full of tears again, “You have no idea. I’m glad to finally be here.”

“Don’t cry!” she exclaims between hiccups: she’s crying as well. “There is me, and Rey, and your mum here. You’ll never be alone again.”

Ben can only nod, overwhelmed by the child’s simple statement; he can feel the truth in Yu’s words, and it’s all he can do to keep himself standing. He takes a few deep breaths to center himself, savoring the sweet scent of Yu’s head on his shoulder, and manages to speak again. 

“Did you eat your vegetables?”

***

“It’s hot!” Yu exclaims to her cup, her tears long gone.

“Careful,” Ben says, giving her a wooden spoon. “Use this, you won’t burn your lips.”

They’re sitting in a room that he supposes is Leia’s office, sipping on delicious hot chocolate prepared by the General herself, when Rey jumps out of the woods, lightsaber blazing, shouting Ben’s name.

“And here she is, my third child,” Leia laughs, opening the window. “Rey, your boyfriend is back for good,” she shouts towards the woods, making her son almost choke on his drink, his ears rapidly turning purple. “Switch that blade off and join us, we have chocolate.”

A blushing, sweaty Rey enters the room, her hair in complete shambles. Her bewildered gaze travels from a beaming Leia, to a bashful and guilty-looking Ben, and settles on Yu, who’s grinning at her with her mouth caked with chocolate.

“Hello, my dear,” Leia greets her, putting a warm cup between her hands, and Rey is forced to finally put her saber away. 

“Hi,” she answers, taking a sip and nodding in Ben’s direction, defiance in her eyes. “Care to tell us how you found us?”

“You’re a bit late to the party,” Leia drones amusedly, looking out her window. “You missed the highlights. A downside of living by yourself, I suppose.” 

“There is a tracker inside Yu’s doll,” Ben reveals, a corner of his mouth lifting. “You took it and gave it to her without checking it first.”

Rey groans in her cup, cheeks tinted again with a healthy shade of pink. He’s right, she didn’t check; but in her defense, sleep was the most important thing at that moment.

“Rey,” Ben pleads. “I’m not here to harm you, I’ve told you. Those destroyers are yours now, the Knights of Ren are commanding them for me for the time being,” Ben continues, his eyes never leaving hers. “We’re defecting, and you could win the war with our help.”

“Are you giving us enough fuel to reach the Outer Rim as well?” Rey asks, piqued. “I’ve seen where _your_ other fleet is.”

“No, I’m bringing the First Order directly to the Inner Rim,” Ben smiles, as he cleans Yu’s face with a napkin. “I’ve told Hux that you’re hiding on Pasher, in an abandoned underground research facility. You’ll find them there in three weeks.”

“Pasher isn’t far from here,” Leia says. “We will have fuel to spare and it’s a desert planet - we can reduce casualties to a minimum.”

Rey’s gaze wanders from Leia to Ben and back, guilt slowly eating at her. She’d immediately assumed the worst as soon as she’d heard the alarm blaring through the base: that he was going to attack. She’d been ready and willing to fight Ben again, but she’d been so wrong; his personal fleet was simply orbiting around Birren while he was already making arrangements with his mother.

“I’ll leave now,” Rey nods, to no one in particular. “Thank you for the chocolate.”

Yu leaves her chair then, taking Ben’s hand, and she approaches Rey. “It’s time for bed again, yes?”

“It’s quite late,” Rey answers, picking the child up.

“Goodnight,” Leia whispers to her, winking. “Enjoy the advantages of living by yourself.”

***

Yu is already half-asleep in her arms when Rey puts her in bed again, under Ben’s watchful gaze. However, when he checks on her with a hand on her head, she wakes up, smiling at him, her front teeth still missing and no new ones in sight.

“Ben,” she begins. “Can we stay here on Birren?”

“I’ll think about it,” he answers, not about to mention that they’re waiting for a battle in three weeks. “Why?”

“I like Rey,” she admits, and Ben laughs heartily. “She was scary at first, but she’s good.”

“She’s good indeed.”

Rey, from the other side of the cot, hides her face between her hands, but Ben can see the tips of her ears quickly turning red. Yu’s hand sneaks from beneath the covers, pulling on his sleeve, catching his attention again.

“Do you want me to read Lady Corvax’s story for you?” Ben asks.

“No, I’m tired,” she admits. “We can read it tomorrow, but please tell me how it ends. I want to know right now.”

Ben gulps, throwing a guilty glance at Rey, who is watching him, cheeks still flushed pink and an eyebrow raised. “Lady Corvax brings her husband back from the World Between Worlds, after a long journey.”

“I’m glad they got to be happy together,” Yu murmurs, yawning. “Ben?”

“Yes?” he whispers.

“Could you be my dad, please?”

It feels like his heart can't decide whether it wants to speed up or stop entirely when he hears her question. Of all the things he’s wanted, and tried his best to be, for Yu–protector, guardian, teacher, friend–he never acknowledged to himself that all of those roles can be condensed into a single one: the role of a father. Maybe, before this moment, he felt undeserving of such an honour, but now, after Yu’s request, he desperately wants to earn it.

“Of course,” he says, his voice broken. “I will try my best.”

Yu nods, giving him a sleepy smile as she snuggles into her blankets.

***

Rey locks the door behind her. Ben is already on her bed, hiding his face in a cushion, his mind a whirlwind of turmoil so strong that the walls she erected between them crumble to nothing and their Bond flares to life, letting every single emotion he’s feeling flood into her own head. There is pain, and longing, and loneliness, but so much love as well; for Yu; for Leia; for Han; and finally for her–it’s so powerful that it almost blinds her. No one has ever loved her like this–so completely, so _rawly_ –and the revelation makes her knees buckle. She’s briefly torn between punching him and kissing him–he put her through a not small amount of agony after all–but when she touches his shoulder and he turns around to face her, she can only hug him tightly, melting between his arms and kissing his tears.

“I found Yu while I was chasing a holocron, in a market on Abafar,” he begins. “I wanted to bring it to you, I hoped that you could finally find your family with it. Then... things happened.”

Rey combs his hair away from his forehead, drying his tears with her thumbs. His freckled skin is soft, and warm, and the thought that he chased a holocron just for her makes her heart beat faster.

“I’m flattered, but there is nothing for me to find.”

He licks his lips “I just wanted you to be able to see for yourself what happened.”

“Ben, even _if_ they loved me, even _if_ they’re alive somewhere, they still sold me to Unkar Plutt. I prefer to think that they were heartless monsters at this point, it would be less painful than discovering that I mattered to them, but they sold me anyways.”

He nods, lowering his gaze.

“I want to believe that blood doesn’t matter, and that I can choose my own family, like Yu did with you,” she confesses, entwining her fingers with his as she brings her face closer to his. “You can keep that holocron. I don’t need it.”

The kiss they exchange now has nothing of the untamed passion they shared earlier, when she thought they were about to have sex through their connection; but now that there is nothing separating them anymore, it’s somehow more real and heavy with meaning. It’s like they’re a single being, born in the Force, and when Ben finally draws back and smiles at her, new tears shining on his cheeks, she can’t help herself, and runs her hand under his shirt. There is no need for words anymore.

He’s not wearing his usual padded tunic, but a simpler boatneck top, and both of her hands are gliding over his warm skin as she removes his shirt, her fingers tangling in his luscious locks after the offending clothing is gone. He crashes his mouth against hers, and her brief worry about the staleness of her breath is quickly dispelled by his eagerness to eat her alive. It’s warm and sticky and marvelous, and she wishes this moment could last forever.

“Remove your trousers, I want to see you,” she demands between kisses, and he complies, finally fully baring himself to her. 

Without clothes he looks even bigger, and her mouth waters as his hardness hovers over his abdomen. It’s the first time she’s seen a cock in her life, and she’s glad it’s Ben’s. She extends her hand, touching it tentatively, making him sigh; if she could, she would listen to this sound every single day for the rest of her life.

Ben takes her hand in his, gently guiding her first movements on his erection. She’s a quick learner, stroking him delicately yet firmly; he’s soon panting and writhing on the mattress. Seized by the need to taste him, she briefly abandons her grip on his cock and scoots down so that she’s kneeling beside his crotch. Her shy tongue reaches to taste the bead of precum resting on the tip of his erection; it’s salty, and tasty, but even tastier is being able to watch his face while she takes him in her mouth. He’s wound so tight that it looks like he could snap at any moment, and his whole body trembles like a leaf while she sucks and nibbles on his cock; his eyes finally meeting hers as her tongue explores his sensitive foreskin.

She’s never done this, but despite her inexperience, she feels like the most powerful creature in the Galaxy right now; especially when his left hand sneaks to the nape of her neck, keeping her head steady while he gently pushes his shaft past her lips, fucking into her mouth. He’s trusting her with the most delicate part of himself, and this makes Rey’s heart soar. Her whole being sings as Ben comes, unbridled, white ropes of seed landing deep inside her mouth. 

She coughs, caught by surprise, his spend tasting alien and slightly bitter on her tongue, but she swallows it with satisfaction. This should feel disgusting, or degrading, but she can’t bring herself to think about such a beautiful thing as nasty, especially after Ben scrambles on the mattress to reach her mouth and kiss her, his hands caressing her hair and her face in a tender, reverent way.

“Let me return the favour,” he rasps, and Rey finds herself on her back again–Ben’s breath hitching as he discovers how wet she already is under her pajamas.

She’s worried about being sweaty down there, about not being clean enough for him, but he feasts on her nonetheless, opening her with his fingers like she’s a ripe fruit. Feeling his warm lips on her cunt is as incredible as feeling him coming inside of her mouth. She can’t avert her eyes from the picture of his head trapped between her thighs, his shock of black hair contrasting beautifully against her pale skin, the tip of his long nose emerging from the dark thatch of hair between her legs. He laps at her generously, with broad strokes of his tongue from her inner lips to her clit, spreading both her own moisture and his saliva along her folds. 

Rey is lost when Ben closes his lips around her clit, moaning loudly until he’s forced to cover her mouth with his hand. She bites into his palm, and he sucks on her bundle of nerves almost in retaliation, triggering her first orgasm of the night. He keeps sucking on her clit as she comes, uncaring about her teeth sunk into his delicate skin. Sensations pile up, reaching an uncomfortable level, and she pushes his head away from between her legs. He finally comes up for breath, cleaning her juices from his mouth with the palm of the hand she just bit. 

Rey’s whole body is tingling. If she had known that sex with him would be this good, she would have taken Ben’s hand in the throne room, negotiating for the safety of the Resistance only after savouring him for the first time. She feels guilty and ashamed of herself for even thinking such a thing, but then he kisses her again and she feels him reassuring her through the Bond: he’s here to make amends, in all the ways she’ll let him. She loses herself in her own taste on his lips, as he caresses the spot on her left arm where her implant lies, as if he’s asking permission to continue.

Rey spreads her legs, and Ben feels for her entrance, breaching her with a digit after a couple of tries. It’s huge compared to her own fingers, but she’s so wet that it slides easily inside her body, in and out, making her crave him even more; she takes his erection in her hand, and aligns it with her slit. He pushes against her a couple of times, but his cock keeps sliding over her folds, making her breath hitch every time its tip bumps against her clit.

“Maybe–maybe it would be better if you’re on top?” he suggests, his cheekbones going pink. “I’ve never done this before.”

“I know.” She smiles, pushing him on his back to straddle him. “I may need a hand.”

He complies, keeping himself steady, and she lowers herself onto him, helped by gravity and her own hunger, a hand splayed over his wildly beating heart. She’s so wet, and his cock slowly fills her like nothing she’s experienced before, the burning stretch of him delicious against her inner walls. Not trusting herself, she kisses him again, while he tentatively pushes against her once, and then twice.

“Does it hurt? he asks her, a hint of worry in his voice.

“Should it?” she answers, sucking on his lower lip, and finds herself on her back again, their bodies still joined.

“It shouldn’t,” he whispers, kissing her chin, her lips, her cheekbones.

Through the Force, she can feel Ben safely cocooned in her warmth, his heart crumbling with gratitude. He hides his face in the crook of her neck as he starts fucking her slowly, long strokes that make her head spin. But it’s not quite enough, and Rey’s hand sneaks between her legs, her clever fingers pushing against her clit as he thrusts his cock inside her cunt, and her inner walls soon flutter around him, electricity spreading from her core throughout her limbs.

“Fuck,” he whines, speeding up his movements. “Keep touching yourself.” 

Their mouths meet again, and Ben comes inside her with a muffled cry, while Rey keeps caressing her nub, slowly riding the aftershocks of her orgasm. Their foreheads touch, and she closes her eyes, basking in his warm embrace, thanking the Force for permitting them to finally experience this together, to finally become one with him for real. 

There are no doubts now. She’s found the family she craved so much.


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short epilogue. Our journey ends, while Ben's, Yu's and Rey's has just started.

“Why is this sand so yellow?” Yu asks, perched on Ben’s shoulders, her doll tightly secured in her hands.

“I have no idea, to be honest,” he answers. “I think sand can come in different colours? We could check on the holopedia once we get home.”

They’re on Jakku. Technically it’s Rey’s fault, since she’d talked extensively to Yu about her own doll that she’d made with scraps. So, as soon as the war ended, they simply had to leave for her homeplanet to “save” the little abandoned pilot, or Yu would have moped and fretted for months.

"Someone is coming here," she announces from her vantage point. 

There is indeed a small dot against the wavering horizon–a speeder maybe? Ben touches the saber secured at his hip, as if to reassure himself that he’s prepared to deal with any kind of threat or inconvenience. 

After the last battle against the First Order, his cracked crystal had stopped working. He’d taken the weapon apart to see if he could fix it, and to everyone’s surprise, the red stone had immediately turned white as soon as he held it in his bare hands. 

That night, he’d dreamed of his uncle. In the vision Luke didn’t say anything to him, but he simply nodded from afar, slowly disappearing into thin air right after the reassuring gesture. Ben woke up, startled, and Rey’s arms were already open and waiting for him, letting him weep without judgement.

“Rey,” he calls. “Have you found it? Someone is coming here.”

Rey finally emerges from her old dwelling in the belly of the crashed AT-AT, shielding her eyes from the blinding light–she's used to trees, and green, and shadow now. There is dust on her forearms and cobwebs in her hair, and her partner helps her remove them. She doesn’t look worried by the approaching stranger.

"Here we are," she says, giving the old doll to Yu. "He needs a bath, but he didn't get stolen at least."

Yu looks carefully at the toy. “Is this Poe?”

“No,” Rey laughs. “I didn’t know him yet when I made it. Do you want him to be Poe?”

Yu nods. “We need a doll for every friend, then.”

“Indeed we do,” Rey answers, unlatching her saberstaff from her belt. 

The speeder slows down, and they can finally see who the pilot is: a scavenger covered in rags. Ben remembers having seen how Rey used to dress herself while living here, and he barely represses a shudder. Yu tightens her grip on him.

“Who are you?” the scavenger asks Rey, their hoarse voice echoing in the emptiness of the desert.

“Rey,” she answers, chin held high.

“Rey who?” 

“Just Rey. And this is my family.”

Ben remains impassible, and Yu waves her hand at the stranger.

“Are you going to sell that?” the scavenger asks, nodding at the definitely out of place TIE interceptor they used to reach Jakku, docked right behind the AT-AT.

“No,” Ben answers. “That ship is not for sale.”

“Pity. Plutt would have a stroke seeing that, assuming he had enough portions to pay for it. Do you perhaps have water? I need to not die until I’ve reached Cratertown.”

Rey nods, extending her canteen to the stranger. They try to give her a portion in exchange, but she refuses. 

“You’re good people,” the scavenger says before restarting their vehicle and heading west. “Godspeed, Just Rey.”

They watch the speeder become a small dot between yellow earth and violet sky. The unforgiving sun is now beginning its descent, and the air quickly cools down, causing goosebumps to rise on Rey’s uncovered arms. She looks up at Yu, and the little one is scanning the horizon again, as if she could still see the scavenger and their speeder, her dolls safely tucked in her belt.

“Let’s go?” Ben prompts, and Rey takes his hand.

The journey back to their house may be long, but they're already home, the three of them, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the RCA organizers Celia, Yam and Jeeno for giving me the opportunity to participate in this awesome project! Again, the biggest thank you to my beta flypaper_brain for being the most attentive and thoughtful beta reader of the planet. If you can read this in proper English and you like it, it's thanks to her.
> 
> @LilibethSonar made this beautiful fanart of Yu's dolls <3 Give them some love on Twitter!

**Author's Note:**

> QueenOfCarrotFlowers and flypaper_brain herself commissioned Sal (@buriedbloom on Twitter, bloomsbury.tumblr.com on Tumblr) to make this incredible art of Ben and Yu reading together. I'm in awe! Give them some love!


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